


Flotsam and Jetsam

by Obsidian_Dragon



Category: Original Work
Genre: Child Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kelpie - Freeform, Mythical Beings & Creatures, if you don't cry I did this wrong, in which a kelpie is the good guy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 11:21:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3247766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Obsidian_Dragon/pseuds/Obsidian_Dragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Myths still exist on the fringes of our modern reality. </p>
<p>Sometimes, small children can see them, either because they believe hard enough...</p>
<p>...or because they need to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flotsam and Jetsam

**Author's Note:**

> This work was written awhile ago, as part of an anthology my writing group put together as practice. The theme was "water" and being the horse-obsessed person I am, a kelpie seemed to be a nature subject for me.
> 
> A Robin Hobb short story was the inspiration, hence the tearjerker. I apologize for nothing.

     I am a forgotten story. I am a figment of myth set adrift, brought to this land in the hearts and minds of a people who could not entirely let go of home. But times change, and cultures shift, and tales gently fade away.

     The results of those tales do not, however. Once sung into existence we linger, forever on the very edges of perception. And that is how I, a kelpie, came to live in this river. Few people know that I’m here; the mind sees what it wants to see, and nothing about this grimy, city-hedged waterway suggests that magical creatures abound.

     A kelpie is defined by his river. A cruel and vicious river will have a cruel and vicious kelpie. I, birthed of gently meandering waters, am a kinder soul--as long as you are kind to me.

     But these days no one approaches me at all. I am not the color of sea foam. I’m the same murky dark of the water I float through, dingy gray and oily black with a hint of algae green. I fill most of my time curled in the sediment of a sleepy river bend, letting the eddies snarl my mane. Shabby town-homes shade my waters. And sometimes, their equally shabby inhabitants throw things into the river.

     I collect these things. A ring, loved and lost. Two thirds of an oval mirror. A dark-haired doll, eyes stuck open. A sad and silent bag of kittens. Usually they come to me, but sometimes I walk the banks, looking for castoffs that catch my eye. I have no use for these things, but it passes the time.

     But there came a day where I caught someone’s eye instead.

     “Pony?”

     The whispered word reached my ears only through a quirk of the careless breeze. I lifted my head and spotted a gaunt little girl crouched against a boulder.

     “Are you a pony?”

     Ah, children. Always more willing to believe the impossible than adults. Unable to respond with words, I simply flicked my tattered ears forward and whuffled softly. This was apparently enough of an invitation for her to scramble to her feet.

     She approached me much as one would a strange dog--which was probably as large an animal as she’d encountered before. I sniffed her extended hand because that seemed to be what she expected of me. She smelled of dirt, sweat, and cigarette smoke.

     “You’re soft,” she said wonderingly, stroking my nose.

     My nose wrinkled at the strong scents and I lifted my head to get a better look at her. Fading patches of yellow and purple fingerprint-shaped bruises peeked out from beneath the tattered sleeve of her t-shirt. Her jeans might have been new ten years and five owners ago.

     For an instant the desire to snatch her up and take her into the river surged, but I let it pass by, an errant wave. She would be poor prey and I was…lonely. The company was not unwelcome and it was a relief to be seen at all, even if she thought I was a pony. The last time anyone had seen me, the townhouses had been pristine. Before that, my river had been surrounded by sweeping prairie. Each incident was a bright spot in my memory, a pearl found after opening thousands of identical oysters. I was old enough to crave novelty above all else.

     “Do you have a name?”

     I didn’t, but this didn’t stop her.

     “I’ve seen pictures of race horses with their names on their halters. But you don’t have anything like that, so I guess you don’t have a name?”

     I shook my head. What need had a river horse of a name?

     “I think I’ll call you Silky, because you are. You don’t mind that, do you? Oh, my name is Beth.” She rambled, but her voice was soft and hesitant. I had a feeling she talked to herself often, not really expecting anyone to hear her. It is not unlike how I talk to myself, even as I do now.

     Beth’s words trailed off as she shot a nervous glance at the sky. She took a couple of tiny steps along the bank and glanced over her shoulder to see if I followed. I did, slowing my own pace to stay near her. Every so often, she’d stoop down to pick up a soda can, cradling them in the folds of her shirt. If there were no cans in sight she would rest her tiny hand on my shoulder, as if to reassure herself I was still there.

     And why wouldn’t I be? I had nowhere else to go.

     Did she collect things for the same reason I did? But why, then, take many of the same thing? The novelty of cans, for me, had been worn off by sheer volume long ago.

     When dusk threatened to arrive, Beth turned around and looked at me for a long moment with dark and solemn eyes. “I need to go back to Grandma’s, Silky. I hope you have some nice hay to eat.” With one more worried glance at the sun, she clutched her cans to her chest and scurried towards the slanting town-homes.

     When the silence got too heavy for me, I dove into the river. There were cans there, buried in the silt. I still didn’t know why she wanted them, but collecting them into a neat pile on the shore for her was at least something else to do.

* * *

 

     I didn’t see her for a few days. I went back to drifting and collecting, only now I had two piles: mine, buried in the riverbed; and hers, piled on the shore. It was a rainy, slate-skied day when she again walked down my river bank. I heaved myself out of the water behind her and whickered.

     Beth jumped and whirled around at the sound. “Oh, Silky!” She took a moment to calm herself, then walked over to stroke my nose. “Silky, were you swimming? You’re all wet.”

     I bobbed my head, then turned and walked towards the can pile. She stopped as soon as she saw it, emitting a strange squeak that I didn’t even realize was a noise humans could make.

     “That’s more than I could pick up in a WHOLE day!” Beth waved her arms as if she wasn’t sure what to do with them, and then ran over and gave me a hug. It was a strange feeling, being hugged. It was a thing I’d witnessed humans doing to each other, but not once had I ever been on the receiving end, no matter how many humans I had resisted the urge to eat. She seemed genuinely happy, and more puzzling yet, even fond of me.

     I pulled away before my damp coat chilled her, although she seemed unperturbed.

     “I got a book from the library about a girl and a herd of magical ponies, Silky! She’d climb up on their backs and run away from her evil stepmother. The ponies always brought her home, but for a little bit at least, she was free.”

     Probably not a book about kelpies, I decided. We never did have the best of reputations, even before humans forgot so much.

     Beth folded up the hem of her shirt in order to gather up the cans, but I gently grabbed her sleeve in my teeth before she could kneel.

     “What are you doing, Silky? I should…probably get these home. There might be enough here to get a soda, once we go to the recycling center. And maybe, if I get back early for once…” She reached up to touch a fresh bruise on her cheek.

     I let go and slowly knelt on the ground. She stared at me for a moment, and I stared back. Some immortals will tell you that the eyes of humans are shallow, just like their existence. I can no longer agree. The soul I saw behind those eyes felt older than I am, and I am very old, indeed.

     Yet she still believed that there were magical ponies in the world, and that’s why she saw me to begin with. I didn’t want to lose that; she brought something novel to my existence when she appeared. It felt better to pretend to be a ‘magical pony’ than to...simply exist, unnoticed.

     Beth stepped forward haltingly, and then swung one pencil-thin leg over my back. I used my inherent magic to keep her in place--shaky and unbalanced, I doubted she would stay on her own, so my skin grew sticky and held her fast. I heaved to my feet. She clutched at my mane.

     “Are we going to run away, Silky?”

     I didn’t think either of us could run away. I couldn’t leave my river for long. And I didn’t know much about young humans, but I didn’t think she’d make it very long by herself, either. So no, we weren’t running _away_. But we could just run for a little while, couldn’t we?

     I hadn’t gone faster than an amble in at least a century.

     Muscles coiled. Hooves dug into mud. I felt Beth take a tighter grip on my mane, and leaped forward.

     No _horse_ can match my speed. We couldn’t see the city as we ran past, only a blur. Beth shrieked, first in fear, then in delight once she realized that I wouldn’t let her fall. When we reached the place where they’d forced my river into a cement prison for the convenience of their roads, I spun around and raced back.

     I stopped at the pile of cans before evening’s colors had begun to paint the sky. It took a conscious effort to release Beth, and when I did, she slid to the ground bonelessly.

     “Oh, Silky.” Beth clung to my legs. “Did you have to bring me back?”

     I could only nuzzle her hair. It took her several minutes to pry herself from my legs, before she slowly picked up her cans and walked away. I stood on the crumbled cement and discarded cigarette butts that made up my river bank and felt strangely restless.

     Our meetings were sporadic. One time, weeks passed, and the pile of cans reached my knees. When I finally saw Beth again, she had a cast on one arm. We didn’t run that day. An amble along the bank was just as pleasant, however. I showed her a culvert as neglected as we were, half grown over with ivy. We spent hours playing Princess and her Steed there one summer afternoon. I had a plastic flower braided into my mane for weeks.

     Sometimes when Beth found me, she was bruised more. Sometimes, less.

     Between visits I found a few more things to add to my private collection: a pink plastic unicorn missing half its horn, a green rubber duck, and a silver fork. After a few days, I added the unicorn to the can pile. I got a very long hug that day, and after that, regularly added random trinkets to the pile. None got me a hug as long as the unicorn did, but nearly everything got at least a smile.

     Instead of time as a whole passing in a haze, as it had for most of my recent life, now it just slowed between our meetings.While Beth was present, my existence was sharp. Clear. I was so much more…real. It may have been because I had purpose, even if it was only to stir a response in this strange, quiet little girl. It felt like returning a favor--a stirring of emotion in her, in exchange for the same in myself.

     Favors are very important to immortals.

* * *

 

      I snapped out of a fuzzy dream of the ocean when I heard a sudden noise. Sound distorts oddly under water, so I didn’t know what was going on until I surfaced. I rarely had any activity around my ‘den,’, barring the occasional human with their rattling cans of colors.

      The sound I’d heard was frantic footfalls, followed shortly by the cans scattering wildly. Something small and dark--it was night and the moon was shrouded--pelted towards the sleepy bend in the river I inhabited. I flared my nostrils and drank in the breeze.

      It was Beth, her scent clammy with fear and sharp with pain. There was no small amount of blood on the wind. I called, and she fell to her knees in her attempt to stop.

      “Silky. Silky, I need to run away, for real this time. Silky!”

      “BETH!”

      I heaved myself onto the bank as the stranger bellowed. His voice was like sandpaper, and I pinned my ears to my skull.

      “Silky, hurry!”

      I knelt. I was still dripping, and my skin was chill--would she notice? No. Her own skin was just as cold, and in places, just as damp. She barely had the strength to climb on, and I finally accepted the fact that she’d be a little crooked as I firmly stuck her in place. I saw a short, stocky man stomping down the bank towards us.

      “Who the hell are you talking to? Get back, you little bitch! Just as useless as your mother...”

      We fled. Beth clung for a few minutes, then slumped against my neck. By then, at least, we had left the shouting man far behind. I wonder what his mind had convinced him he’d seen? If he had any imagination at all, he’d probably think I was a large dog. If not, men often muttered about how it must have been nothing. Over the years I’d come to link imagination with empathy, however, something this human clearly had none of.

     I slowed to a walk and craned my neck around to peer at my passenger.

      “Thank you, Silky.” Her voice was so soft I barely caught it. “Can we…not go back this time?”

      It was an easy wish to grant. Her heart beat so faintly I could scarcely feel it, while it had always beat wildly on our runs before. I kept walking as her blood seeped down my shoulder and warmed my skin. I kept walking away from all that ailed her until she was completely quiet and still.

      I am a kelpie. I don’t understand what she endured, even now. I’m sure other humans were terrible to her--I’ve witnessed enough of that through the broken windows along my river. All I knew was that the world was suddenly far emptier. She’d been the jetsam to my flotsam. I was a forgotten story, and she was a bit of forgotten humanity.

     I didn’t know who the man was, but she’d run to me and away from him. It was only fair that I got to keep her, since I was the only one who wanted her. When I returned to my sleepy river bend, I found it empty and still. I flicked an ear but heard no sirens.

     No one was looking for Beth.

     I waded into my river until it was well over my head, breathing the water as easily as I had the air. When I reached my little treasure hoard, I released Beth from my hide’s magical snare and grasped her with my teeth to keep her from the current. I finally nestled her in a place of honor, between my mirror and the bag of kittens.

     I couldn’t keep her there forever. She’d wash away in time, as with all else. But I’d still be there, and I’d remember. I couldn’t run away myself, but it was oddly fulfilling to have helped her run away in the end. Perhaps another girl would walk along my river in time.

     I curled up in the silt and watched the current pass by.

     The world was extra-sharp.

 


End file.
